Plasma 5

[CitizenJoe]

While there are perhaps some technical benefits to Plasma 5 over KDE 4.x, it was fast and stable and ultimately customizable! It is now flat and the least visually interesting desktop available for Linux. A good analogy would be Ubuntu going to Unity or Gnome going to Gnome 3, KDE could well face the same mass exodus! Mate was born out of the death of Gnome 2. People, the actual users, didn't like what Gnome was forcing down their throats! That is not the only instance of that happening either. The polished color and visual appeal of KDE 4 was what attracted users to it. It was big and bold and ultimately configurable! We liked that! If we had wanted a plane Jane featureless desktop we would have gone with LXDE or elsewhere in the first place. There are NO visually exciting themes for Plasma or anything rich and colorful or icon options in system settings! There were some flat icon sets created for KDE 4 for those who wanted that. They have taken the Cadillac of desktops and stripped out it's very soul. Any chance for pushing for a revitalization of the KDE 4 we love? I'm sure that much of the technical advances of Plasma 5 could be incorporated into KDE 4. For those who  want KDE with a colorless plane vanilla desktop, I'm sure there were plenty of options available for KDE 4. It would have made more sense to offer KDE 4 with upgraded underpinnings with the option of a basic version, a mini or lite edition than to kill off the whole desktop like this. We live in the 21st century with fast multi-core processors, huge capacities of RAM, massively powerful GPUs, 3D, etc. yet KDE has chosen to create a desktop less visually interesting than Windows 3.1 from 1992. Somewhere along the line I think someone really got lost!  Any chance you could keep on with the development of KDE 4 and keep releasing it? I've been using KDE 4 since 2009 because it was what it was. It is no longer what it was! The vast majority of users are not overly concerned with what is going on in the background we just want something reliable and pleasing to work with. If they had waited till the widgets and themes and desktop goodies had been transferred over to Plasma 5 it might not seem like such an empty vessel, a beta! Even something as basic as the advanced options for the clock are still missing!! It might be easier to bring the old KDE 4 glory to LXQT and let Plasma 5 slide into oblivion!

[paxmark1]

Well, for plasma5 in a rolling release of debian, the Siduction forums is a good resource. Lots of rough edges in version 5 of kde, an analogy might be in sports, that they changed the numbers of players on the field and the size of goal (or width of the end zone) - what with using QT5 and a totally revamped system.  And they are transtioning to Wayland.   

It is not my cup of tea, I abandoned KDE near a decade ago because it was getting heavy and and a nasty neepomuk cache bug (stuck into expansion and not fixed for years).

But how much can a small niche distro do with limited numbrs of developers, no matter how great their skill sets.  Other than Tanglu; who does debian testing distros, not many. 

It is all right to vent steam at the state of KDE5.  But if you want to find someone to do a fork of KDE4, LMD(ebian)E(dition) or LinuxMint might be more suitable. After all, they did much work on Mate there.  But a KDE4 fork is probably a Xorg future (no Wayland). 

But as you say in your last sentence, LXQT just might do the trick, committed to a more universal language (QT5) than Gnome, picking what works of the KF5 tier one apps (that are written solely in QT5), and going forward with Wayland.    Considering that they are maybe only 12 main developers, LXQT is not your LXDE of the past.  irc on freenode #lxde

peace out

[balloon]

Linux Mint KDE is scheduled to adopt the Plasma 5 from 18.
It has a big relationship as Kubuntu, which has become the base has been transferred to the Plasma 5 from 15.04.
Ubuntu KDE desktop based Distribution after publication of 16.04 LTS, will be migrated to from time to time Plasma 5.

Debian has lagged behind compared to it. but Sparky has to compete with it.
There what you see is the Debian future, One is the Plasma 5.

[CitizenJoe]

Debian is "slow and steady" so probably won't release Plasma 5 till it actually works. NOTHING even close to Beta gets into their stable releases and even the "testing" is pretty stable and reliable. My linux journey started with ubuntu. With the package manager crashing almost every time I used it and being slow I thought I had hit nirvana when I tried Mint. It still amazes me that all these other people, Mint, BlackLab, etc., do ubuntu better than ubuntu! If these guys could dump their ubuntu base and use something better their distros would be better off. Then I found Sparky and some other non ubuntu distros and the light came on and I won't go back!  :D You would think though that KDE would have noticed what happened when Gnome went it's own way and lost market share and when Ubuntu tried to force Unity down their user's throats and a lot of people quit using ubuntu. And this list could go on. When you don't listen to your user base, you lose your user base! Doing that can bite you in the ass. Manjaro switched from KDE 4 to Plasma 5 and boot time jumped almost 40%! It is even slower than Kubuntu! Even the advance settings for the clock are missing! That is hardly ready for prime time! For them to state that KDE 4 development has ended is premature. When Plasma 5 is complete, stable, all there ... I think they have the cart before the horse here. I have tried LXDE a few times and never really liked it. LXQT on the other hand I find a lot more pleasant to use. I'm going to be doing a lot of testing various configurations to see what I can do with it. The flat pasty colorless desktop on Plasma 5 does not light my fire. Neepomuk and Akonadi can be turned off in KDE 4 and to me as well they are a waste of space and system resources. But that again is forcing what you want down the user's throat rather than giving them the option.